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Saturday, June 30, 2012

Hi Readers!!! HAPPY SATURDAY! I am so glad it's the weekend! Now that I'm working again I have a ton of stuff to get done around the house. Chinchilla cages need cleaning, the kitchen floor needs mopping (omg I'm going to pawn that one off on my son I hope) and since I can't remember the last time I dusted the living room I'm putting that on my list too! It's a cloudy day here and a bit dismal and when those days happen I like to put on a bright mani to cheer up the joint lol! I saw a mani like this in the Adventures of Stamping group by the super cool Val. She does some really neat mani's and I loved hers the second I saw it. She called it her "Bollywood" look. It's a gradient of Bollywood inspired colors and then stamped to give the impression of Sari cloth.

This is definitely a bright cheerful look for a dreary day I think! My friend Samina posts all the lovely clothes she wears and this mani reminds me of her so much!

Here's a lovely collage I put together of my Bollywood mani!

Is anyone doing anything fun and fantastic this weekend? It seems since I'm not I need to live vicariously through someone else!

Friday, June 29, 2012

Hi Readers! I'm going to tell you something that you might want to make sure you're sitting for. Ready?? Clarins 230 ruined my mani. Yes you heard me--Clarins 230 totally ruined my Illamasqua gradient! I thought it would be awesome to gradient with the Illamasqua's I have--Phallic, Scarab, Baptiste and Virdian and it was! It turned out great

I gradiented Baptiste with Scarab and Phallic with Viridian and look--it turned out great! Normally when you put Clarin's 230 over both Scarab and Baptiste it looks amazing so I thought hey I'm going try it over my my gradient. FAIL!

YIKES this is just a hot mess! I was pretty upset about it because before putting on the Clarins 230 this was a gorgeous gradient. Check out these before and after pics

I really didn't want to take it off because honestly this is an expensive mani! Illamasqua's aren't cheap and neither is Clarins 230 so what to do--what to do? In the process of trying to figure out how I was going to save this craptastic mani I got nail mail and in the package was China Glaze Passion! Lo and behold it saved the day! From now on I will refer to Passion as the McGuyver of polish!

Look at how gorgeous this mani is now!!!I LOVE how the Clarins 230 peeks out under the stamping!

It just blows me away that a polish I snagged for $4 in a blog sale saved this ultra expensive mani from the garbage!

I stamped Passion over my Illamasqua gradient using the leaf image from BM 210 and the peacock feathers image from BM 212. It is so lovely now!Here's the star of the show!!

I am definitely going to make some jewelry like this! I'd like to try ring and matching necklace! But in the meantime I tried on a few rings I had laying around to see how they looked with it.

This one looks great with it I think!

This one's okay but not as great as the peacock. What do you think about this mani Readers? Did you think it looked okay without the stamping over it? Do you agree with me and think the Clarins 230 ruined a great gradient?Thanks for stopping by!! I hope you all have a fantastic day!

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Hi Readers! Sometimes you do something even you can't believe you did. That's how I feel about this mani. I know last week I did a couple of mani's that matched the blouses I wore to work and today is another one of those mani's. This one is pretty incredible. I know when you look at it you think holy cow how did she do this but trust me when I say this is a super easy mani.

All this mani required was some sponging! I started with a base of Zoya Pasha then I sponged on a dark grey franken I made some more Pasha and a few dabs of white and voila! I tried to do an accent nail with black and then multi colored stamping on my ring finger but honestly you can't tell the difference lol!

I used my new BM plates for this mani and I am just loving these plates! I chose images from BM 313 for this one. Some of my girlfriends told me this looked like mother of pearl. I don't know if I see that I thought it looked more like tile flooring lol!

It's just SO hard not to keep staring at it!

I wish i had a ring to go with it I might have to work on that!

Now here's where the awesome part of this mani takes place--check out how well it matches the top I wore!

AMAZEBALLS!I will definitely be using this BM 313 plate again with some different colors! Thanks for stopping by!! I hope you all have a fantastic day!

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Hi Readers! Today's is green, blue and aqua day in the summer challenge. I decided to go holo gradient--I know you're shocked right lol!!!! Come on now i haven't gradiented in awhile--wait I just did it Sunday LOL! Okay whatever I'm good at gradienting so I'm doing it again!!!

I used a couple of my holo frankens for this gradient--the light green is my Special Gifts and the dark blue is my Seeing Blind. The Aqua in the middle is Jade Energy. I really like this gradient alot!

I tried using green blue aqua first and that was a major fail. Green aqua blue is much better!

I tried to amp this baby up by stamping but it didn't really work! It was hard to find polishes that would show up over the holo!

It's alot easier to see indoors lol!

Make sure to check out what all my fellow Summer Challengers did today!

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Hi Readers! Today's Summer Challenge is Wimbledon. I don't know about you guys but when I think about Wimbledon only one thing comes to mind--Andre Agassi. Yep in my humble opinion the greatest tennis player EVAH! And of course when I think of Andre Agassi usually the first thing I think of is his tight little butt in those cute denim shorts he wore when he first hit the circa at the tender age of 17! OMG so I present you with my Wimbledon Summer Challenge!

If you were expecting some kind of free hand tennis rackets um think again lol! This is as good as I can get with Wimbledon. And it's my first acid wash mani. I'm not a huge fan.

I feel like one of those kids in school who were doing cool thinks like skateboarding but when you tried it you sucked at it

Let's see who's denim looks better shall we?Andre's

or mine

oooooh definitely Andre's!!!!

Yes I had to put that cute hairy belly shot in there!I miss Andre Agassi alot--tennis doesn't appeal to me much anymore without him. He was handsome, charismatic and a helluva tennis player!

That's him winning in 1992 it brought tears to my eyes.So did this one of him in 2006, his last Wimbledon, which also brought tears to me eyes. Heck I'm bawling now writing this up!

Monday, June 25, 2012

Hi Readers! Today's Monkey See Monkey Do post is all about the guys! My friend Jim is a guy who loves to wear nail polish. No he's not a gay men or a girlie man he's a really cool manly man who likes nail polish. Personally I think his choice in a favorite football team sucks BUT not the fact that he wears nail polish! Jim has struggled with being accepted for wanting to paint his toes and fingers and I believe it's wrong for society to be judgmental and non accepting of something as small and trivial as nail polish and who should or should not wear it. BUT I don't want to stand on my soap box and complain about it either (too late though hey???) so on to the polish portion of today's blog lol! Here I am recreating Jim's Man On Fire mani which you can see here

I feel like these would look better taken outside in the sun BUT we had no sun for pics lols!

Jim used a Layla to stamp with but I don't have any so I hauled out my OPI DS Original to stamp my flames

Who knew OPI DS Original would stamp so well? I used the lovely and my new favorite black, Essence Hunt Me If You Can for my base--it's just so lovely!

I used Mash-48 for the flames and again I can't stress how much I love the latest MASH set.

Here's the comparison pics. Jim's mani is on top and mine on the bottom

I really love that Jim is wanting to branch out from just wearing polish to stamping. While it's true a lot of stamping images out there seem very female driven, there are a lot I think are male gender friendly and the flames are one of them. I think it's great he's looking at more and more designs to amp up his mani just like we gals do! You guys all know I can't just wear polish so why then should it be any different for Jim? I think once you stamp you get addicted to it--sort of like eating cherry turnovers with the big sugar crunchy tops. Once you start you just can't stop!

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Hi Readers! Today's Sunday Challenge is all about my friend Emily! She LOVES Goth and she kept wanting it for the Sunday challenge and it kept getting out voted so today it's all about her beloved Goth lol! I'm not going to lie Readers I was like what the french is Goth? Well I can tell you one thing it's not--it's not the wreck of a remake Tim Burton did with Dark Shadows! OMG do not even get me started on that! He completely and totally ruined what was a fantastic tv series for piss sake! ARG!

OOPS I was getting started so back to the nails! Okay so since I didn't really know what condoned Goth I decided to just go for some dark colors and again I want to smack myself! I FINALLY hauled out the Vampire's Love Essence's I got a bazillion years ago and used The Dawn Is Broken--which I have used before and Hunt Me If You Can which is the most incredible gorgeous black on the planet I think. Go lord Readers if you have some stuff in your untrieds haul 'em out! First I started with a coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wet Cement. For my gradient I used Essence The Dawn Is Broken and Hunt Me If You Can. This is a kick ass gradient!

The Dawn Is Broken and Hunt Me If You Can have buried shimmer in them that is so delicious! The Dawn Is Broken has micro dark blue pieces in it and Hunt Me If You Can has micro prismatic shimmer.

Okay here's where I drew a complete blank. What did I want to do here? Well what I wanted to do was this I wanted to do some dark clouds creeping over a full moon with a scary house with possibly some bats BUT then my fab friend Sarah from Chalkboard Nails reminded me I had the new Bundle Monster set--yes I got them on Friday and I hadn't even opened them yet. So this is what I did instead!!!!!!!!!!!

Did you see that Readers???? BARB WIRE!!!! OMG! Before the 3rd set from Bundle Monster came out this was me to them "I sure would love a barbed wire image" "Hey it would be great to see a barbed wire image" "oooh maybe you guys could do a barbed wire image" And as you can see someone listened to me!!!!! The barbed wire is from plate BM323

Is this Goth? um probably not. Could this possibly be Goth meets Cowboy?? Maybe. I don't really know/care what it is, it's HAWT! I posted this on Bundle Monster's Facebook wall and got some nice compliments. My fave one was from Cris of Let Them Have Polish she called it bad ass!! You know when Cris tells you you're mani is bad ass it's a good one so now my head is HUGE and i worry about getting out the door!

I'm not really sure what Emily is going to think of it though LOL! I told her it was going to be the best of both our worlds colliding! Anyone who knows me knows I love me some hot cowboys!!!! Barbed wire always reminds me of hard working mega sexy cowboys. Oh who am I kidding it just reminds me of cowboys period they don't even have to be mega sexy!

The new Bundle Monster set is fantastic! Just like the two previous sets the plates are perfectly etched and the designs unique and fun. The images are nice and large and should fit most fingers. I didn't even have to worry about getting all of the image to fit my thumb. The 3rd set is similar to the 2nd set in that there are more full size nail images rather than small separate images. The only downside to this is if you only have one set it's hard to layer. SO I recommend owning all three sets LOL!Here's a picture of the polishes I used and how my sponge looked for gradienting

I will definitely be doing this mani again for work! I already know the shirt it will match lol! What do you think about this look Readers? Do you think barbed wire can be Goth? More importantly do you think Emily is going to like this as much as I do????Thanks for stopping by!! I hope you all have a fantastic day!

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Hi Readers! Ug! Today my summer challenge mani is just mediocre. I really hate when that happens too. I think we all know I don't do free hand so possibilities were slim with coming up with something lol. One of the new MASH plates has a checkered tablecloth look though so I decided to use that. My problem was my stamping color wasn't really as dark as it should have been so my tablecloth is more pink and white than red and white!

I could possibly have too many "ants" on my middle finger too lol!

While this is a pretty cute mani I don't know if this is something I would wear to work so good thing it's Saturday!

Pretty easy to get this look if you like it. For my watermelon accent nail I did a standard Ruffian using OPI Jade Is The New Black, Hey! Get In Lime! and Dutch Tulips. I dotted on some black for the seeds. The picnic table cloth is white with Dutch Tulips stamped over it using Mash-50. The ants on the table cloth are WetnWild's Tangled In My Web which is just a square black glitter.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Hi Readers! Today's mani is one in the Summer Challenge! The theme for today is jungle and while I love a good animal print mani--I've done a few of them in "real" life colors so I decided to branch out! Yep I went neon and when I say went I mean I went ALL THE WAY neon!!!

I first saw the neon snakeskin on Holy Manicures blog and it was fantastic! I've been meaning to try it for awhile now and I just thought today would be the perfect day for it! I wanted to change it up a bit with some accent nails and I think the whole mani is super fun and perfect for a Friday!

I used a bazillion of the China Glaze neons I have and just blobbed on the colors and then stamped with white using BM 215

For the accent nails I blobbed the neon's over Mash-43 and then stamped over white. I love how they look together!

I'm not sure if there are neon snakes in the real jungle but there are some in my nail jungle for sure!

I'm not even sick of looking at them yet and you know how I am with neon lol!

As always there are a bunch of fab ladies doing the summer challenge. Please check them out when you have time!!